Clark Stith Announces Candidacy For Secretary of State

ROCK SPRINGS – Clark Stith announced today that he is a Republican candidate for the Wyoming Office of Secretary of State. “I am running to promote the Wyoming values of individual liberty, self-reliance and personal responsibility. They are Wyoming values. They are Republican values. They make us who we are,” Stith said. “To implement these shared values, I am for a smaller, more user-friendly and more transparent government. The core job responsibilities of the Secretary of State are right in my wheelhouse,” Stith continued. The Secretary of State is responsible for administering Wyoming laws relating to elections, corporations, state securities regulation, secured transactions and is the official repository for all State agency regulations. “Dealing with these issues is what I do for a living,” Stith said. “I am confident that I can hit the ground running upon taking office in January, 2015.”

One specific area that Stith would like to address is making the Secretary of State’s website more user-friendly and accessible to the general public. “I use the Secretary of State’s website practically every day as part of my job. The site is not bad, but it could use a tune up.” The goal is to make government more transparent. Reducing some of the access fees would help, according to Stith. For example, the currently listed annual fee to download financing statement information from the Secretary of State’s website is $2,000. “Having such a high paywall makes information that is technically public effectively private,” Stith said.

Stith has practiced law in Rock Springs since 1997. He received his J.D. in 1991 from Georgetown University Law Center, an M.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1992, and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and philosophy from the University of Kansas in 1985. During 1985-’86, he studied as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in then West Germany. He has two children — Kirsi, age 18, and Steven, age 16. They both play hockey, soccer and attend Rock Springs High School.